Systematically Biased Beliefs About Political Influence: Evidence from the Perceptions of Political Influence on Policy Outcomes Survey

Retrospective
voting circumvents many of voters’ cognitive limitations, but if voters’
attributional judgments are systematically biased, retrospective voting becomes
an independent source of political failure. We design and administer a new
survey of the general public and political experts to test for such biases. Our
analysis reveals frequent, large, robust biases for a wide array of political
actors and outcomes, with an overarching tendency for the public to
overestimate influence. Retrospective voting usually gives elected leaders
supraoptimal incentives, though there are important cases where the reverse
holds.